Natra Studios’ latest collection showcases the rising brands star quality — in more ways than one.
“The studio’s logo is a star,” founder Rebecca Miller tells us, when explaining how she started her fledging brand, “It actually comes from the wrinkle in my dog’s head. We also name each product after dogs that we know or have in our lives, so each piece has its own personality.”
As a women-led brand in a male-dominated industry, the Bristol-based brand’s unisex pieces are aimed to be far more than just man’s best friend. Natra’s latest release weave in references from terracewear and mid-00’s Burberry into beautiful, handmade pieces that utilise deadstock cotton flannel.
With Natra’s star continuing to rise, @camby joined Rebecca on set for her brand’s latest campaign to discuss navigating her way through the fashion world, her utilitarian approach, and why she wants her brand to create clothing that looks good in any environment.
So obviously this being your first year in existence, what’s like the main challenges that you’ve faced growing Natra studios?
I think just as any sort of start up brand your learning on the job, you don’t have no idea how anything works. Well, I didn’t have any idea how any of it worked. So I come from a design background in terms of marketing and production and development. I’m just social media as well as being a massive difficult part for me. Yeah. It’s been a challenge like learning all the jobs and trying to do all of them at once. It’s been the main struggle, but luckily I have Matt, who helps me out a lot. We work together and he was working as a Merchandizer, he has a really good idea of the overview of brands and works with a lot of other brands like beams, for example. So yeah, he has great ideas when it comes to art direction, and allocating work.So as soon as Matt came on board, it was a lot easier to understand what I needed to put my energy into and what not, to let someone else pay for it. And as well, when I was doing my own brands, you are really protective over everything you do. I find it hard to let anyone else touch anything. So that was quite a learning curve actually. I do need to let other people get involved.
Would you say, having all these other elements to consider, not just making the garment, has allowed you to have a wider perspective of how you really want Natra to be perceived?
Yeah. Well, from the beginning, the audience and how it sort of the type, the market or the people that we were looking at, to invest in the brand or look at the brand in any sort of way was quite clear for us.But connecting with them was incredibly difficult, especially when as a designer, I look at the clothes, but I’ve never had to think about how the storytelling comes across to everyone else. It’s just me making the clothes that I like. And forgetting about the audience. So yeah, in that sense, yeah, definitely.
Have there been any inspirations that you’ve taken from other people? You know, like when working with creative direction, etc., has that had any impact on you/Natra?
Yeah, like I said, when you like when you own the branding, like you want to have control of everything, like a proper control freak.
It’s about trust in the people that you’re working with. Like today, everyone I’ve really trusted because I’ve worked with them before, I know their work. So I know they’re going to do a good job. I definitely have to take inspiration from everyone else. Like working with Josh, for example. I thought I had an idea of how I wanted to shoot to go today, but being able to let go and let Josh take control of it because he knows what he’s doing, he knows how to take a good picture. So putting the responsibility in his hands was a massive weight lifted.
Like today I think it went really well. I think communication is one of the biggest keys. As long as everyone’s clear on what you are actually wanting, you get sort of a balance of work.
So throughout your collections, you’ve used dogs, almost like a running theme throughout. What is the reason behind this?
That’s a good question. So well, the brand started, based on my dog, which sounds really weird.
It was like two massive passions of mine. The dog is like the center of my world. it sounds quite sad. I mean, it is probably quite sad to be honest, but he is the center, of a lot of things. I got him when I was in quite a dark time and he’s just gave me a lot of reasons to be happy and like, wake up in the morning. Another thing that’s part of my passions is clothes and shoes and apparel, that entire world was so combining them just made sense for me, especially when I’m doing what started as a passion project, combining two works that I love just made sense.
So the studio’s logo is like a star. It comes from him, he’s a Sharpie, and he’s got this wrinkle star on his head when he was a puppy. I was looking at photos and I saw this, like, little puppy with this star and his head, I just thought Perfect. Now it’s become the logo for the brand, which just sort of encompasses working with dogs. I love it. We also name each product after dogs. That we know or have in our lives. So it’s quite endless and like each one of them has a different personality. Each dog that you know, that sort of suits each garment.
Throughout the last year, developing and exploring the journey of Natra I. How have you found working as a female designer in a male dominated industry?
It’s been difficult, but I’d say it was difficult, I think I’ve become accustomed to it, especially coming from a design background working in corporate working for brands like adidas and Clarks, they’ve always been male dominated industries, especially within footwear, which is what I worked on. So for Adidas I used to work on the terrace footwear which is heavily, heavily dictated by the male consumer. That’s just the way the shoe sells.
So you have to tap into that. I was already quite accustomed to it and understood how it all worked. Starting my own brand,I have learned a little bit more.
Working in a male dominated industry hasn’t been as much as shocker as maybe it could be for someone else because I have the experience there. Also there are a lot of people that I really trust.
With your garments being handmade and running a brand to maintain structure, what’s your average day look like?
So I have a studio in Bristol. It’s like a ten minute drive from my house.
It’s on this massive industrial estate and it’s got all these tradesmen that work that it’s just me and my dog turning up every day. An average day, other than the shoot days, we do. And coming up to London. This is normally a one off, very much out of the blue. Usually i’m going through different processes. I work through each of the steps, and I work seasonally as well. So I try to keep as much structure as possible. We have the summer collection and the winter collection. It’s become a lot more refined now, as it has been for the last year, because it was a little bit all over the place.I didn’t expect it to be what it is now. I was just sort of enjoying myself. So I’ve had to find a lot more structure in terms of drops, collections and making sure there’s enough pieces to build a look around. So on the average day I’ll probably work through the design process, development, fabric process and sourcing is another big factor that I have to work on.
That takes a lot of, our fabrics are deadstock, a lot of research has to go into each of them. The composition of the fabrics as well. So making sure they work for a summer collection, for example, the one we’re using for this drop is a flannel brushed cotton. That’s a deadstock, fabric as well. It’s not easy to find deadstock as well as nice fabrics that work for the collection. It takes a lot of research to find the fabrics you want to use.
For people that obviously don’t, you and are getting to know the brand. There’s more one on one pieces. Just before the New Year. You did the giveaway? Was that Wool Tweed Jacket within the giveaway a one off?
For the last year we’ve been doing small projects, and again, it’s very limited on the amount of quantities you can do. So it makes it very limited on buying.
We were doing made to order. Say there was 20m of fabric available to us. We sell a certain amount. So only ten would be available and then, make them to order so that we didn’t make too many size small or too many size larges. It’s just trying to understand the consumer’s buying habits. Now we’re in a pretty good position where we know what sizes people are buying so we can take more of a risk when it comes to making a product. The green wool tweed jacket from the giveaway was an amazing fabric I found and I wanted to make a jacket out of that.
So it was just one of one. It wasn’t available in any larger amount of fabrics. It’s just one of those where I’ve seen the fabric and thought “I need to make a jacket from this.”
From the outside looking in, your pieces are very unique. Do you have any reference points? For your designs that you’re constantly pulling from?
For me, it’s a mixture of my favorite era, like when Burberry was really chavvy and people used to wear slight Burberry caps, then just buy the fabric and make whatever they wanted out of it.I really like that era, I think it’s like the early 2000s. So I’m always referencing that era. Separately from not in terms of esthetic. It probably lies within the Burberry kind of chavvy look, I guess. But I also love the way performance wear and technical wear and cut lines in that sense.
So looking at Massimo, CP and Stone Island, he’s always been a reference point for me. Making those two worlds come together was interesting. It was difficult, but that’s where a lot of the cut lines and technical shapes and fits come from more sportswear. Then in terms of esthetic and fabrication as well, using the cottons and tweeds and walls,It’s mixing the two worlds of high end and sportswear, I guess. In a sense.
What is the process to reach this end goal of each jacket? With your garments being super technical from the Ossie sidewinder. Is there a specific process you follow each time?
That’s a good question. I start with the shapes, so the fit. I prefer, more cropped and boxier fit. Then I look at the cut lines. I’ll sketch sort of a silhouette, look at cut lines in terms of the way the jacket would move on the body on the way just the flow works in terms of an outfit. And then fabrication is surprisingly probably one of the last things I do, even though it takes a lot of my time. With the Ossie jacket, for example, I started with the silhouette and the sketch and the cut lines. I take a sort of diversion in terms of fabric. So it would have been very easy to go for a more nylon approach, a poly sort of ripstop. I really like the idea of just using denim, like a checked denim and just seeing how it would work. It could have gone really badly.
But luckily the fabrics worked really well for it. The same with this one as well. With, the moto jacket and the hooded, the Hooded One, the cotton and flannel was normally sort of pigeonholed into certain garments, it would normally be used for a shirt or something. It’s nice to play around with it as it’s not been done.It takes a few attempts to get the fabric and the construction right, when it does blend together, it’s really nice that’s what I quite like, just the trial and error of that.
The idea behind this zero jacket was more of just like, an actually wearable jacket which you can dress up or dress down. Which seems quite simple, but I even found it difficult to find a jacket, even to design a jacket which you can wear out in the rain or whatever, and like in any scenario.You can even wear it to the pub wherever. It’s not so pigeonholed into one purpose.
The journey from the beginning to now, what are some key things that you’ve found beneficial or that you’ve learned you’d want to pass on to anyone that’s thinking about starting a new brand, or have started a new brand. Is there anything that you have learned from trial and error? Yeah, that you would sort of want, share with other people?
The main thing is knowing your aesthetic, knowing what your aim is, what you’re trying to achieve. Whether it’s the sustainability side, more tech side, really deep dive into what it is you’re trying to achieve in terms of apparel or anything really footwear, Just having a clear vision on that. You’ll hear a lot of voices from other people that are interested in your brands and trying to give advice and tell you where and how you should change sort of styles.
Always listen. Definitely listen to what people have to say, especially if you’re someone that you trust that understands you. Listen. Just know that you’re you should always back yourself. It needs to be something you’re really into and really passionate about.The attitude that comes along with wearing certain garments can change, like the way you carry yourself, for example. I learned that quite brutally when I was working for companies as a designer, because you get so many voices from sales people from marketing where you have to follow a certain aesthetic of the brand and you have to listen to everyone’s opinion, like you can’t really have your own opinion. That is mainly why I wanted to do my own thing. I was tired of having to listen to everyone else, I just wanted to do my own thing for once. To do something that I enjoyed and was passionate about, I loved working for the brands.
It’s different when you’re doing it for yourself. Yeah, you have to put yourself out there and put the clothes out there. It’s a reflection of who you are as a person as well. Sometimes that’s quite daunting. It always works out though. As long as you love what you do.
Obviously, you’ve got shorts, trousers, you’ve done the hoodies, you got the jackets, which is, I feel like a kind of big staple piece for Natra. Do you think you’ll ever go into footwear?
Yeah, definitely. There’s some things coming up in terms of collaborations with footwear brands. At the moment. I don’t think that Natra Studios would do its own footwear line. As a whole, different world. Definitely in terms of collaborations, there’s a few things hopefully coming up with the brand, and things I’d like to do with that as well. But footwear, I love footwear.
Have you felt any pressures as a female designer or are there any things that you know may be found daunting?
It is hard to step into that space, when you are surrounded by it’s a different energy when you’re working with men or with that sort of demographic. It isn’t a different energy. I hate, like, events and stuff. I hate socializing in these events. Just because I question my ability when I’m in this situation. Deep down, I feel like I do know what I’m doing, whenever I am in those scenarios, I question how much I know what I know, and my experience.
Definitely is daunting at the beginning when you’re working in a male dominated industry, but you sort of have to embrace it and remember the although it is scary, you can as a woman, offer a different perspective on clothing, that maybe men haven’t thought about, or maybe they have, but it’s just a different perspective on things, and it’s always great to get different, different ideas.I want to make sure that anybody can wear Natra and the client leaves and it looks good no matter what.
Maybe it has a more feminine touch. I’m not sure if it does, but it’s just. when I first started with Nartra Studios, I was doing all the pattern cutting all by myself. And I was playing and trying samples. I just tried it on myself to see how it looks on a woman, hoping that it looks good on a man as well. It’s definitely more unisex. Rather than male or female.
Images by: @camby__
